Posts By Dave Briggs

Public service messages with a smile

I’ve been a bit serious lately on the blog. Sorry. Here’s a bit of whimsy to lighten the mood. Worcestershire County Council have produced this video to inform the public about what they are doing about pot holes. As you’ll notice, they haven’t gone for the usual talking head interview approach. I rather like itRead… Read more »

Open or closed – does anything online ever last?

It’s only now, a couple of weeks after the announcement, that I feel I can talk about the demise of Google Reader. Up til now, the whole thing has just been too upsetting. Reader is the site I turn to first in the day, before email or Twitter, and the one I check last asRead… Read more »

The dream is fading fast

John Naughton: Because we’ve all bought into the techno-utopianism of the early Internet, we tend to assume that it’s always going to be open to everyone. But as more and more of the world goes online, it’s clear that we’re heading in a very different direction — towards an online world dominated by huge, primarilyRead… Read more »

Link roundup

I find this stuff so you don’t have to: Crime and Justice: an open data challenge Simple steps towards local prosperity Editorially is the collaborative writing tool we’ve been waiting for Google’s Keep: is it for keeps? Probably not The coming of the industrial internet Ready for Doc Ready Only open systems are effective forRead… Read more »

Let’s do the LocalGovCamp again

Photo by Mark Braggins. It’s probably about time we sorted LocalGovCamp out again! For various reasons it’s going to be running after the summer rather than before, as has previously been the case. So, the two potential dates are 21st or 28th September. Let me know if you feel strongly one way or another inRead… Read more »

Fragments

Donald Barthelme, in See the Moon?, in 1968: Fragments are the only forms I trust. Italo Calvino, in If on a Winter’s Night, a Traveller, in 1979: …the dimension of time has been shattered, we cannot love or think except in fragments of time each of which goes off along its own trajectory and immediatelyRead… Read more »

Link roundup

I find this stuff so you don’t have to: MOOC provider EdX goes open source – with an interesting choice of licence Making better choices for the technology we use Remember Ning? Once-buzzy social network has relaunched again as a publishing platform Why and how we publish digital content Wikis as flexible and powerful knowledgeRead… Read more »

Digital Literacy

It strikes me that digital literacy is becoming more and more important, as more and more of the things we do in life are digitalised. It helps to understand how computers work if you want to buy some music these days, or watch a film, or read a book. Not just the physcial act ofRead… Read more »